Is it all right if I backtrack back to number 29, I know that’s the wrong direction, just skip over me if you feel it’s been discussed quite enough.
This is just such a beautifully erotic piece, but that aspect seems to have little discussion. I know that Leonard uses physical love as a metaphor, but the physical here seems to be of great importance.
I’m just going to go over it and share with you what I see – which admittedly is overly simplistic.
II.29
Bless the Lord, O my soul, who made you a singer in his holy house forever, who has given you a tongue like the wind, and a heart like the sea,
To me the singer is a woman and it is also love. His holy house is Gods house and it is the mans body.
who has journeyed you from generation to generation to this impeccable moment of sweet bewilderment.
Let me tell you how beautiful I think this is – For me this is the whole poem. It is at this moment, in this act of love (oh I agree on Manna with the orgasm thing) that life itself is created. The moment of creation – how much closer to God can you get then this white light moment.
Our very existence was based on a moment just like this, as was our parents as was their parents …. From generation to generation all of us connected through, as Leonard calls it, “this impeccable moment of sweet bewilderment.”
I said as Leonard calls it – I am aware that is only my interpretation and that he may have been saying something completely different – if he is, I choose not to hear it.
Bless the Lord who has surrounded the traffic of human interest with the majesty of his law, who has given a direction to the falling leaf, and a goal to the green shoot.
These things are things that god directs.
Tremble, my soul, before the one who creates good and evil, that a man may choose among worlds; and tremble before the furnace of light in which you are formed and to which you return, until the time when he suspends his light and withdraws into himself, and there is no world, and there is no soul anywhere. Bless the one who judges you with his strap and his mercy, who covers with a million years of dust those who say, I have not sinned.
Here I get distracted by the word furnace – as a small child my Father used to read me Blake's the Tyger , I loved it. I can’t read this without thinking of that. I don’t think Leonard is challenging god, but I think it is the notion that God is the creator and the destroyer if he so chooses. Man’s choices are only based on what God has given us to choose from.
Gather me, O my soul, around your longing,
He says
your longing? He doesn’t say my or our… oh dear Gregs word counting has me wondering here – I think the longing is Loves longing – I’m not sure.
and from your eternal place
Well this of course is where all life begins the delta – again I think he’s speaking of the physical and the metaphysical at the same time.
inform my homelessness,
Well, Leonard has my cheeks warm – please tell me I don’t need to explain this. If our bodies are houses …
(side note – someone recently told me that at the end of the world – Jesus would make me a man! I didn’t want to be argumentative but in my head I was thinking it was a horrible thought – I like being a women – I like my breasts that have been filled with milk, I like my tummy that has been filled with babies. I like the fact that, I can welcome my husband into my body, gods house and for that time he becomes part of body and part of me.
Okay stopping now – I could babble about babies and love for a long time.)
that I may bring you forth and husband you,
I think making love to god and making love to the woman are one and the same. I think the below is a description of that, I find it very spiritual and very erotic – I especially like the words “invite me to uncover you” the idea of discovering more of God. I believe this metaphysical discovery is happening during physical act between man and woman.
and make the day a throne for your activity, and the night a tower for your watchfulness, and all my time your just dominion. Sing, my soul, to the one who moves like music, who comes down like steps of lightning, who widens space with the thought of his name, who returns like death, deep and intangible, to his own absence and his own glory. Bless the Lord, O my soul, draw down the blessing of authority, that you may invite me to uncover you, and hold you precious till I’m worn away, and we are refreshed, soul and shadow, refreshed and rested like a sundial standing in the night. Bless the Lord, O my soul, cry out toward his mercy, cry out with tears and song and every instrument, stretch yourself toward the undivided glory which he established merely as his footstool, when he created forever, and he made it-is-finished, and he signed the foundations of unity,
and polished the atoms of love to shine back beams and paths and gates of return. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Bless his name forever.
Back to the beginning – the white light moment bringing man closer to god and the man seems pretty pleased with this close encounter with his maker.
